Encryption technologies are well established in industries where data is private and must be secured against theft, intrusion, intentional corruption, or any other non-authorized access and/or use. As each generation of data encryption utilities has been created, effort has been expended by multiple groups and individuals to discover a way around the encryption capability so as to be able to access the private data. Public key encryption algorithms and one-time cipher systems can create very strong protection for data encrypted utilizing these methods. Additional methods have been created to attempt to address the creation of secure encryption methods that may be applied very quickly, so as to perform encryption in real-time, and to create ever more secure data storage for data being encrypted.
Blockchain systems are most commonly understood within the realm of financial transactions and the creation and use of digital currencies such as bitcoins. A blockchain has the advantage of providing a complete log of all transactions that are associated with the blockchain as an inherent feature of the blockchain. Additionally, a blockchain may permit a user to “walk” the blockchain to discover the provenance of any and all data stored within the blockchain. This feature is a very powerful means for knowing the origin and association of each portion of data stored within the blockchain, but comes at a cost of requiring more and more time to encode the data within a blockchain as transactions associated with the blockchain become more numerous.
Encrypted data may be stored within a blockchain, although the amount of time required to construct and/or access any portion of the blockchain can be prohibitively long.